The #13 Grand Valley State women's basketball team dropped a tough road contest to the #25 Lewis Flyers on Friday night (Nov. 16) by a score of 74-66. The Lakers led 19-17 after the first quarter but were outscored by six, 21-15, in the second to give the Flyers the four-point lead at halftime, 38-34. Lewis would extend their lead to eight by the end of the third, 56-48, and the margin would stand through the fourth before the 74-66 defeat.
The Lakers will be back in action this Sunday (Nov. 18) as they are set to face off with the Indianapolis Greyhounds at 1:00 PM.
Lewis managed to get the best of the Lakers down low, outscoring GVSU 42-24 in the paint which helped them to a 54.5% mark from the field while the Lakers shot 36.8% on the night. The Flyers also won the rebounding game, 35-26, while GVSU managed four less turnovers, 20-16, while also leading in second chance points, 12-8, and blocks, 3-1.
Junior
Maddie Dailey scored a team-high 17 points in her 34 minutes on the court where she was 5-for-14 from the field and 5-of-6 from the charity stripe. Fellow junior
Jenn DeBoer added 14 points herself, going 6-for-19, while adding in two steals. Center
Cassidy Boensch added 12 points as well.
The Lakers got on the board first to start the contest thanks via a
Victoria Hedemark layup but LU's Jessica Kelliher quickly answered with a layup of her own. Dailey would lay in another bucket at the 8:35 mark and it would be just over one minute later before Boensch would add another layup for the early 6-2 Laker lead. Three successive jumpers, two from Lewis and one from the DeBoer, would bring the score to 8-6 before two more Laker buckets over the next few minutes would put GVSU up six, 12-6. With just over four minutes left, the Flyers slowly started to chip away at the lead and by the 0:53 mark would tie it up 17-all. Another DeBoer jumper with 0:42 left would wrap up the scoring in the first quarter and give the Lakers the 19-17 advantage.
Lewis jumped out early in the second stanza, quickly regaining the lead on a triple from Morgan Glatczak to go up 22-19. After a free throw from Hedemark with 8:50 on the clock, neither team would score for nearly three minutes until a Hedemark layup broke the drought and tied the game at 22 with 6:03 to go. Lewis used an 8-2 run to distance themselves from the Lakers, 30-24 and eventually 34-26, before a
Taya Andrews triple would cut the lead to five, 34-29, with 2:27 to go. Scoring would close in the second half with on a
Natalie Koenig free throw with 0:06 left to bring the score to 38-34.
Much like the second quarter, the Flyers used the third to slowly build up a lead on the Lakers. Just before the halfway mark, the Lakers trailed by 10, 48-38. After some back and forth, the deficit remained at 10 with 0:47 on the clock, 56-46, before a pair of Boensch free throws cut it to eight, 56-48, heading into the final quarter.
The lead built up by the Flyers in the second and third quarters would turn out to be the decisive factor as GVSU and LU would play even basketball in the fourth as they both scored 18 points.
With the loss, GVSU falls to 2-1 on the year but will look to bounce back against the Greyhounds on Sunday.
